The
West’s Presumption of Moral Superiority by David
Edwards and Media Lenswww.dissidentvoice.orgMay 6, 2004

West Is Best?

Writing in the
Daily Mirror on April 22, Tony Parsons raged at the brutal killing
of four American security guards in Falluja: “The gloating sadistic
savagery of those Iraqi ‘freedom fighters’ appals me”, Parsons
declared, before concluding with a judgment that echoes down the
centuries:

“There is something
rotten at the heart of Iraq.” (Parsons, ‘Reign of evil in Iraq’,
Daily Mirror)

Consider the logic:
the West armed Iraq at the height of Saddam Hussein’s atrocities; it
wrecked the country with the equivalent of seven Hiroshima-size atom
bombs during the 1991 war; it killed a million civilians through
“genocidal” sanctions, according to senior UN diplomats who resigned
in protest. Last year, the West again waged a massive war based on a
set of completely false pretexts killing another 50,000 people,
allowing the country to be looted and burned, and has recently
killed 600 more people in Falluja alone. But, according to Parsons,
there is something rotten at the heart of Iraq!

Compare Parson’s
view with that of the British governor of Kenya, who declared in
1955: "The task to which we have set our minds is to civilise a
great mass of human beings who are in a very primitive moral and
social state." (Quoted, John Pilger, ‘Iraq is a War of National
Liberation’, The New Statesman, April 15, 2004)

In “civilising” the
country, the British army killed 10,000 Kenyans for the loss of 32
European lives.

The horrific irony
of this casual presumption of moral superiority is that journalists
view the world through the lens of that presumption -- Western acts,
no matter how immoral, tend to become, by definition, necessary and
just; or, at worst, well-intended mistakes.

The same arrogance
was expressed in a March 2000 Guardian article by Polly Toynbee
entitled, ‘The West really is the best’. Toynbee wrote:

"In our political and social culture
we have a democratic way of life which we know, without any doubt at
all, is far better than any other in the history of humanity. Even
if we don't like to admit it, we are all missionaries and believers
that our own way is the best when it comes to the things that really
matter." (Toynbee, The Observer, March 5, 2000)

In the New York
Times, Michael Wines warned in 1999 that despite America’s “victory
over Communism and inhumanity” in Kosovo, problems remained.
Americans often perceived their morals as universal, Wines wrote,
but in fact there was “a yawning gap between the West and much of
the world on the value of a single human life.” (FAIR, Action Alert,
June 17, 1999)

Likewise, reporting
the sale of children by impoverished Cambodian mothers, John Irvine
opined on ITN news last month: “The people of Cambodia don’t hold to
moral values that we take for granted.” (John Irvine, ITN 10:30
News, March 24, 2004)

The reason, Irvine
explained, was that the morality of Cambodian society had been
shattered by the madness of Pol Pot’s genocidal rule. The hypocrisy
of Irvine’s moral judgment is staggering. David P. Chandler, former
US Foreign Service Officer in Phnom Penh, describes a primary cause
of the genocide:

"To a large extent, I think, American
actions are to blame. From 1969 to 1973, after all, we dropped more
than 500,000 tons of bombs on the Cambodian countryside. Nearly half
of this tonnage fell in 1973... In those few months, we may have
driven thousands of people out of their minds. We certainly
accelerated the course of the [Pol Pot] revolution." (Quoted, Noam
Chomsky and Edward Herman, After The Cataclysm, South End
Press, 1979, p.154)

Imagine the outrage
if Irvine had said something similar of Germany or Israel after
Hitler, declaring that traumatized Germans or Israelis no longer
hold to the moral values that “we” take for granted. A damning
statement of this kind would have to be based on massive evidence
and research ­ not the observations of a visiting journalist backed
up by the anecdotal comments of a single Cambodian academic, as in
the case of Irvine’s report. But such requirements disappear out the
window when it comes to reporting on impoverished Third World
countries, which are hardly in a position to protest their portrayal
in our media.

There is a deep
irony here. After all, if there is a heart to the moral values
claimed for the West, it must lie in a capacity for compassion and
respect for all peoples regardless of nationality, race or religion.
The problem is that journalists consistently patronize Third World
people as children of a lesser moral God, with their suffering
treated as being of strictly secondary importance.

In his reporting
from Iraq last year, Irvine, like so many journalists, portrayed the
West as moral and political saviours of the benighted people of
Iraq: "A war of three weeks has brought an end to decades of Iraqi
misery", he reported on April 9. (ITN Evening News, April 9, 2003)

Astonishingly naive
words one year on.

Standing beside a
deep crater that had once been a restaurant and residential area in
the heart of Baghdad -- destroyed in a US attempt to kill Saddam
Hussein -- Irvine said in response to the destruction of dozens of
civilian lives:

"It's the Americans who are setting
the agenda. After this, Saddam Hussein is a dead man walking." (ITN
Evening News, April 7, 2003)

There was none of
the outrage at the taking of Western lives that naturally fills
media reports in the morally superior West.

Great Satan Lens?

An aggrieved
American writer emailed us at Media Lens recently, saying: “Your
hatred for the United States and everything American is so obvious,
you really should change the name of your organization to ‘GreatSatanLens.org.’"
(Email to Media Lens, April 22)

This is badly
mistaken. We believe that hatred and contempt for others are
precisely the cause of many problems afflicting the modern
world. Of course the US and UK are not responsible for all of these
horrors, of course crimes are committed against them -­ the killing
of the four Americans in Falluja last month was an obscenity.

But, as we have
seen, focusing laser-like on the crimes of official enemies merely
reinforces a moral blindness to our own violence and
depravity beneath the rhetoric of a society which “without any doubt
at all, is far better than any other in the history of humanity.”

Thus, in discussing
the Israeli-Palestinian conflict on the BBC’s Question Time,
Baroness Amos, Leader of the House of Lords, talked of “terrorism on
the Palestinian side” but merely of “activities” on the Israeli side
(BBC1, April 29, 2004). And yet Israel is the occupying power using
armed force to impose illegal settlements and horrific oppression on
a captive people.

This tendency to
downplay Western crimes is all around us, constantly influencing how
we see ourselves and our world. Last week we had this exchange of
emails with Channel 4 News presenter, Jon Snow:

Dear Jon

In tonight's Snowmail you refer to
“awful shots of US military personnel enjoying sordid japes at the
humiliating expense of Iraqi prisoners”. This happened in “The very
same institution in which Saddam did his torturing”.

Saddam tortures, “we” engage in
‘sordid japes’. Why the difference? And is it reasonable to describe
these horrific acts as merely “sordid japes”?

Best wishes

David Edwards and David Cromwell
(April 30)

Snow replied:

“well having been there myself..i
guess the extraction of finger and toenails, live disembowling and
death itself may be a touch worse than these vile images, but i
guess morally u are right they just the same..best, jon snow” (April
30)

We responded:

Thanks, Jon

Totally agree, torture can be more and
less severe - actual disembowlings are way beyond the threat of
electrocution. But that isn't the point we're making -- threatening
someone with electrocution is still a severe form of torture, not a
“jape”.

Similarly, the level of fear required
to force Iraqi men to submit to such degradation - presumably
induced by threatened or actual violence ­ also constitutes very
real torture.

It really is impossible to imagine
Channel 4 responding to photos of similar acts performed on US or UK
soldiers as “sordid japes.” We only need to recall the reaction when
‘coalition’ POWs were shown on TV by the Iraqi army.

Best wishes

David Edwards and David Cromwell”
(April 30)

Snow again replied:

“you clearly cant have loked closely
at the photos these guys and the woman are actually laughing..they
regard it as a jape..we raegard as a fould war crime..such is
life..” (May 4)

We responded:

Nobody was laughing in the picture of
an Iraqi being threatened with electrocution. Even if there had
been, their regarding torture as “a jape” would not have justified
Channel 4 describing their actions in the same terms, obviously. If
the victims had been US or UK troops, it is unthinkable that Channel
4 would have defined events from the point of view of the torturers.

Best wishes

David Edwards and David Cromwell (May
4)

Snow replied:

“Ok well thanks..very
helpful..snowmail will have to be reigned in..free slow stuff
clearly dangerous..i’ll ensure that no such errors occur again,
thank you for pointing it out. Best wishes, Jon snow” (May 4)

Solutions Begin With the Mirror

The most powerful
solutions to hatred, violence and injustice are rooted in compassion
and respect for others. But compassion begins in honesty, in the
recognition that all human beings are of equal value and importance.
We in the West need to face the fact that our historical refusal to
accept this basic moral premise ­ instead subordinating ‘Third
World’ people to power and profit - has resulted in appalling misery
around the world.

By looking honestly
in the mirror in this way, the possibility is raised of working to
limit the destructiveness of our society, and so of resolving many
of the problems facing us. How can we hope to become less harmful,
more just, if we remain fooled by the propaganda that insists we are
already paragons of virtue?

People who call
themselves ‘realists’, even ‘Machiavellian realists’, argue that
this is all nonsense ­ compassion and concern for others are all
very well, but in ‘the real world’ corporations are legally obliged
to maximize profits. And as for state policy, that is very often
designed to deliver on that same obligation, regardless of the costs
to people and planet.

True enough. But,
ultimately, corporations and states are mere abstract concepts ­
they are run by real, thinking people. And people are always able to
choose compassion and common sense over blind, institutionalized
greed.

It seems clear that
governments are restrained in their use of force to the extent that
the public and media oppose the killing of innocents. And there
surely has been progress in this regard. If the current crisis in
Iraq had happened forty years ago, for example, we believe Falluja
would now lie completely in ruins.

Last year, a
Spanish friend told us how, every weekend, vast crowds of anti-war
protestors thronged the streets of major cities throughout Spain in
the weeks ahead of the assault on Iraq. He said it was breathtaking,
astonishing. The Machiavellians of the Aznar government backed Bush
and Blair to the hilt, but 90% of the Spanish people did not - they
opposed war in all circumstances.

The people are
still there. The Aznar government has gone, and the troops are
coming home.